1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to healthcare systems for capturing and maintaining patient healthcare records and employing information in the records to proactively alert hospital workers to a condition that places patient health at risk.
2. Background
A healthcare provider, such as a hospital, typically admits and treats some number of patients on a daily basis. Upon admission to the hospital, a healthcare worker can create a record that includes medical and/or personal information associated with each patient. Depending upon the size of the hospital, the healthcare provider can create and maintain a very large number of these medical records, and such records are typically created and then stored as an electronic medical record (EMR) in a healthcare system. Depending upon the size of the hospital, the healthcare system can operate in a single computational device, such as a personal computer or other device, or the healthcare system can be distributed in a plurality of computational devices that are connected to over a network (healthcare system network or simply the Network) to one or more servers which operate to, among other things, capture and store the electronic medical records. In addition to including patient medical information, an EMR can also include the identity and location (hospital room) of a hospital bed to which a patient is assigned. Hospital beds are available that include physical and physiological sensors which are connected over the Network to the Healthcare System. Information (telemetry) collected by the sensors can be processed at the bed by a controller or can be transmitted to the Hospital System for processing and storage in an EMR associated with the patient currently occupying the bed.
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing functionality included in a hospital healthcare system 10 that allows it to receive and store information from both healthcare workers and hospital beds. A server 11 is shown connected over one or more links to the healthcare system 10 network. The server 11 generally operates to capture and maintain a store 12 of patient EMRs, and it has a bed telemetry processing function 14 that operates to capture and process information received from hospital beds connected to the network. The sever 11 also has an event notification module 13 that can access information in the EMR store 12 and bed telemetry information to determine whether an alert message should be sent to a hospital worker or call point connected to the healthcare system 10. Alternatively, a database management system (DBMS) running on the healthcare system server 11 can operate to maintain the patient electronic medical records and maintain hospital bed configuration status information in a database 15 where the information can be accessed by the event notification module 13.
Healthcare organizations, such as a hospital or other care facility, have identified many patient health risks that are directly associated with care the patient receives while a resident in the facility. Some of these risks are associated with the physiological health of the patient, such as the risk of stroke or heart attack, or the risk of congestive heart failure for instance. Other types of risk can be associated with the physical well being of a patient, such as whether a patient is a fall risk. Typically upon admission to a healthcare organization, each patient can be evaluated to determine the degree to which they are at risk of falling. This evaluation process can include a physical examination to observe a patient's motor skills and balance, and/or it can include simply observing a patient or questioning the patient about their fall history. Regardless of the protocol employed to quantify the fall risk of a particular patient, a fall risk can be assigned to each patient and entered into a healthcare system, such as the healthcare system 10 described earlier, and stored in the patients EMR. A patients EMR can be easily accessed by a healthcare worker, such as a nurse, nurses aid or physician, in order to determine whether or not a patient is at risk of falling, and if so the level or degree to which the patient is at risk. Depending upon the patient's fall risk level, the patient's bed can be set up or configured by the healthcare worker in a manner that can prevent the patient from accidentally falling out of the bed, or at the bed can be set up so that the patient can more easily enter and exit the bed.
Hospital beds, such as the bed illustrated in FIG. 2, can be configured to include a number of different types of sensors, and the bed can be connected, over the network, to a healthcare system. Some bed sensors function to detect a patients weight in one or more positions on the surface of a bed, other bed sensors detect whether or not bed side rails are engaged in a full up position or not, some bed sensors operate to detect the angle at which one portion of a bed meets another portion of the bed, and still other bed sensors can detect physiological characteristics of a patient such as heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure to name only three characteristics. The sensors included in each bed can be connected to a central bed control mechanism which can operate to receive/capture information (telemetry) from each of the sensors, and can process the telemetry prior to transmission over a network link to a healthcare system or send the sensor telemetry to the healthcare system for processing. The healthcare system can then process the information received from the bed sensors to determine whether a healthcare worker should be notified of an event, such as a patient having exited their bed or a change in a patient's physiological measurement such as heart rate, blood pressure or respiratory rate as detected by bed sensors. Typically, a healthcare system can generate an alert in the event that a change to any one or more of a patient's physiological measurements is greater than a threshold amount, and the healthcare system is typically not capable of determining whether the physiological changes to the patient place the patient at risk of some adverse health event, such as a stroke.